


The Passenger

by terminallybored



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: AU, Blood, Horror, M/M, Sterek Week 2018, SterekHalloween4, Stiles makes bad choices, as per usual, minor gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-11 13:47:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16476722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/terminallybored/pseuds/terminallybored
Summary: A story about picking up a stranger on the side of a dark road and why this is a bad idea.





	The Passenger

**Author's Note:**

> Day 7 of Sterek Week 2018  
> Theme: Halloween

Stiles wouldn’t call himself a good Samaritan. He’s not got nearly the ego for it. And really, theologically speaking, anyone who thinks of himself as a good Samaritan probably isn’t.

Point being, he doesn’t just go around picking up strangers on the side of the road. He does have a little bit of common sense, thank you. But he’s about to make an exception.

The fog tonight is so thick that the Jeep’s headlights only cut a few feet into it. The forest rises up on either side of the road, and he’s well outside the city’s budget limits for street lights. It’s just a shadow in the fog at first, long and thin and distorted. As Stiles gets closer, Jeep only crawling along the pitch-dark road, the shape condenses in the mist and becomes something more human-sized. The details only become apparent once the headlights wash over the stranger from a scant foot behind him: black leather jacket, white shirt, dark hair, and a loping, onward trudge. He doesn’t look back at the car lighting his way, close enough that he can surely hear the engine. He just keeps moving forward. Forward.

He has the disposition of a serial killer. But also, he’s hot. Stiles does try to claim to himself that it’s just that he’s not heartless, and he hates just driving in this shit so walking in it must really, really suck. But he also knows he’s full of shit and, again, not a good Samaritan.

“Hey,” he calls, leaning over to awkwardly roll the Jeep’s passenger-side window down while trying to not run over the hot serial killer. “Hey, dude!” The guy finally stops and looks over. With his face awash in the headlights, Stiles can see he’s got at least a couple of days of stubble on his face, and dark circles under his eyes. He ignores the way the light reflects off the guy’s eyes when he turns his head out of the glare of headlights. People have eyeshine, right? That’s a normal thing.

“What?”

Stiles opens his hands in a ‘WTF?’ gesture. “What do you mean, ‘what?’ Why do people normally stop beside strangers on the side of the road?” The guy just stares at him. Stiles finds himself waiting too long, waiting to see if he’s going to blink. He doesn’t. “Uh… do you need a ride? This is me, being a compassionate person?”

The guy says nothing. He just reaches in the window and lifts the door lock, then pulls the door open. The Jeep leans a little as he climbs inside and shuts the door. He stares straight ahead into the darkness, and it takes Stiles a minute to realize he’s rolled up the window. Right. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

“So… where you headed?” Stiles pulls the Jeep back onto the road and giving it a little more speed.

The guy rests his arm across his lap, then stops moving. “Beacon Hills.”

“I know it. Spent a good deal of time kicking around there.” It’s a small-ish town, but not so small that it’s weird to meet someone he doesn’t know. People have surely come and gone since he was last there. “So. I’m Stiles,” he finally says, once it becomes apparent that the hot serial killer isn’t going to make small talk on his own.

“Derek.”

Stiles glances over for a second. It’s weird when someone doesn’t tell him his name is weird. Everyone who meets him tells him that. Derek is just staring out the windshield. The shadows cast back from the headlights pool under his eyes, making them look large and hollow. He turns his head after a second, and two pinpoints in the blackness reflect off the scant light again.

“You should pay attention to the road.” The arm across his lap looks like it’s shifted. His hand has disappeared inside his leather jacket. Stiles might have started to worry about a weapon, if not for the slight squishing sound. Derek’s shirt isn’t white anymore. “The road.”

Stiles turns his eyes back to the road. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

Hugging a tight curve to the right plunges the passenger side of the Jeep into darkness as the treeline looms over them, casting hard shadows that seem to reach into the car. Stiles looks over when the road straightens out and the moon can seep back in through the line of sky above them. Derek’s entire shirt is dark and wet. His throat glistens in the dark, torn edges of flesh jutting out.

“So I guess you’re not the kind of ghost that just disappears, are you?”

Derek lolls his head to the side, like his neck doesn’t work properly anymore. Beady red pinpoints glow in the dark pits of his eyes. “You should probably be more afraid.” The words rattle in his throat, raspy and wet.

Stiles sighs and blinks his eyes, the colors turning inside out as he opens them again. White dots against black sclera reflect back from the rear-view mirror. “Dude, I was just trying to save us this awkward situation.”

“What are you?” Derek asks, with neither fear nor surprise in his voice. Which Stiles supposes isn’t surprising if he really does have business in Beacon Hills. No one gets out of that town without knowing that there are monsters under the bed.

“Don’t take it too personally, big guy.” Stiles reaches over and pats Derek’s knee, which earns him a growl and fingertips that come back sticky and red. “You’re a hella scary ghost. But demons are pretty hard to rattle.”

“What’s a demon doing driving in the woods?”

Stiles raises his eyebrows. “What’s a ghost doing walking by the side of the road in the woods? At least I’m going faster.” Derek makes a low, wet sound that might be a growl if his vocal chords were in better shape. “Fine, low blow. I apologize. I’ve got quotas to meet. Back roads and all-night gas stations are decent for that. Your turn.”

“My pack. They’re in Beacon Hills.”

Ghost classifications are weird and varied. It’s impossible to say if that pack is still alive to be saved. Derek could be stuck in a loop. He could have hitched rides on this road hundreds of times before. Or he could have died two hours ago. Revenge is a hell of a drug, and does more for extending life than keto ever will.

There’s also the small matter of Derek still being hot, even if he’s a little torn up right now.

“Don’t suppose you’d want to make a deal?”

“I don’t think I have much of a soul left to trade.”

Fair assessment. But Stiles can smell the bloodlust that rises over the stench of rot in the car. The anger and pain that roll off of Derek are so thick that Stiles can taste it when he licks his lips. So maybe the deal won’t make him employee of the month. It’ll sure as hell be fun though.

“Even the house loses money on a deal sometimes. Riddle me this. If we go find your pack and deliver them from evil, you gonna have any angst left in the tank?”

Derek makes a hard, rhythmic sound that manages to spray a few flecks of blood on the windshield. Laughing, Stiles realizes, through his ruined throat. His voice still works enough to produce a guttural rattle that forms a word. “Plenty.”

No one is on that dark road through the middle of the forest and outside the budget limits for street lights. No one else sees it when the interior of the battered Jeep glows like a smoldering fire inside. Fire belches from the exhaust pipe as it speeds off into the darkness, and two voices that almost sound human laugh into the night.


End file.
